Unfortunately, a long period has passed since media reported the "professional public hearing attendee," and no related department has actively responded to it.
The public hearing is an important link for discussing the necessity and feasibility of a price adjustment and also a key link for consumers and businessmen to safeguard their own interests. No matter whether it is the price of water price, parking, phone bills or heating, public hearings on price are closely connected with public interests. In an "interest-sensitive" era, the public will definitely not ignore their own rights and interests, and a public hearing ought to attract wide attention and great participation.
Information is asymmetrical; technical terms always produce a lot of obstacles; industrial costs can never be clear; procedures are defective; speeches, which last only a few minutes cannot make a speaker fully express his/her view, the veto power of the consumers cannot been fully respected. A public hearing like that could definitely not be the platform for the public to safeguard their interests. Such a hearing is a "price-rising meeting" or even a "price-rising declaration meeting." If the public does not have enough rights to know, participate, speak and supervise, the public hearing will be disconnected with the public interests. And then, how can they be interested in it?
In recent years, the fact that "the price will rise after every public hearing" once attracted a lot of attention and a case that the price declined after a public hearing once surprisingly became a focal point. Besides, about 90 percent of the representatives in a water price hearing held in Beijing once voted for raising the price, and the statuses of the representatives in a water price public hearing held in Harbin once were suspected. All these things could reflect the weakened effectiveness of the public hearing system. If the original intention of "raising the democratic level, scientific level and openness of the government in price setting" cannot be realized, the credibility of the system will be compromised. Without the foundation of the masses, the public hearing will change from an interest-safeguarding platform into a meaningless empty show.
